Jim Richardson

Edge of the World: Frame 10,525

©National Geographic

This is the story of frame number 10,525. 

I took 14,976 pictures for my coverage of the Hebrides Islands of Scotland, and frame 10,525 is the one that made it to the opening spread of Edge of the World  in the January issue of National Geographic Magazine. 

From the time I wrote my original Hebrides proposal, through the research and photography in the field, and finally to hammering out layouts at headquarters in Washington, D.C.,  I faced myriad paths and detours, each offering possibilities and failings.  Out of this maze of blind luck and essential insight came one moment, one photograph, that somehow rose to claim the layout's prime position on the story's opening page.  

Today and in the days to come, I'm going to tell stories about all the pictures in the Hebrides story, detailing the circumstances that brought each to the page.  Some stories will be about photographic technique; more likely I'll be talking about walking the knife edge of the creative process, with success and ecstasy on one side and failure and doom on the other.

It is this uncertainty  -- and hope -- that drives me every day I'm in the field. 

- - -

There was a reason I was on a ridge overlooking the Old Man of Storr on the Isle of Skye.  It was because of the story proposal to National Geographic that I had written 2 1/2 years ago.  I could almost recite it by heart.

Here are the opening paragraphs:

"For countless millennia the North Atlantic has raged and stormed against the oldest exposed rocks in the world.  This epic battle has forged one of the world’s great archipelagos, a brave band of islands, battered and scarred on the outer front lines, towering and defiant in the inner keep, by turns alluring and heartless, yet always revered for their sheer tenacity. 

"It is landscape in places, seascape in others. Fjords slice deep into the towering mountain islands while the low-lying islands remain barely afloat, waterlogged and pock-marked with thousands of lochs.  Names betray the races of men who have tried to claim them:  Barra and Eriksay, Coll and Tiree, the Uists, and our romantic favorite, The Isle of Skye. On his island sojourn composer Felix Mendelssohn was enchanted by what he saw and he wrote a haunting overture.  What else could he call it?

"The Hebrides."

So:  With a few words, long before I had ever set foot in Scotland to begin shooting, I had fixed a very specific idea in the minds of National Geographic editors.  I had to come back with an image that showed that idea.  It had to look wild, a bit primordial, with great geologic forces at work, fresh and alive, like some battle being waged by the rocks.  A pretty landscape wouldn't do -- not for the story's opening spread. Grandeur would be all right, but the image also needed a raw-toothed, almost brutal, quality to it.  It need to speak to the Earth's monumental forces at work. 

Move Your Money: banking reform that can work

Maybe this is off topic for Working Photographer.  Maybe not.

Straight out of It's a Wonderful Life a wonderful idea has sprung up. If you are tired of the banking industry in America playing roulette with your money then there's an easy and effective way to stop them.  Take your money away from Mr. Potter and put it in George Bailey's Savings and Loan!  You remember Mr. Potter and George Bailey.  Was there ever a clearer choice when it came to who was doing the right thing?

Well, there's a new movement afoot and I couldn't be happier.  I heard about it first on the Huffington Post.  It's called "Move Your Money" and you can read that article here:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/move-your-money-a-new-yea_b_406022.html

It seems they got to talking at a dinner gathering about the problems of the banking industry when someone suggested taking their money out of the big, reckless banks and putting it in a community bank. Filmmaker Eugene Jarecki was among the party and he quickly suggested the analogy with the tale of George Bailey's Savings and Loan as he battled the forces of the powerful (and the clearly evil) Mr. Potter. With that image in mind the conversation took off and soon a plan was hatched.

Jarecki and friends sprung into action and produced a great video about the concept.  See it here: http://moveyourmoney.info/

But they did more than that.  They created that web site where you can put in your zip code and look up a community bank near you. If you move your money to a community bank you effectively take it out of the hands of the Potter's of the world (and there seem to be a lot of them.) That money then becomes available for local loans to local people.  The hard working folks who came to George's rescue in the movie.  If we care about local issues this is one not-so-small step we can take.

This is where I come in.  I immediately put in our zip code (67456) and up came a long list of local banks.  Down in there was our bank: Farmers State Bank!  That's the one out on the corner by the Pizza Hut where Dave Schrag does business. (Dave would be our George Bailey though he doesn't look much like Jimmy Stewart.  Sorry Dave.)

Now people sometimes laugh when I pull out my Mastercard with the name on it: Farmers State Bank. It's not a Gold Card, doesn't get me free flier miles, and it certainly doesn't elicit looks of admiration and envy when I flash it in a London restaurant or a Paris Hotel. But when I call the Farmers State Bank I talk to straight to Dave, tell him what I need, and I usually get it. Dave knows us and knows our business. He knows what we need to keep going and he's there when things are tough.  You might think Dave would be better understanding the cash flow needs of wheat farmers, and you might be right. But I've had a lot of conversations with Dave, told him a lot about the freelance photography business, how things work (and sometimes don't work) and he's got a pretty good handle on it now.  

So I guess we already moved our money.  I'm glad to say it's a good idea.  It works.

Jim Richardson

Small World Gallery

Main Street, PO Box 106

Lindsborg, Kansas 67456

785 227-4442

www.smallworldgallery.net

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Handholding in Space

Talk about a camera platform! This sure beats shooting out the window of a Cessna 172 (which is what I usually do.)

But what really shocked me about this picture of one of the astronauts shooting out the window of the International Space Station was his obvious sheer strength. That's a 400mm f2.8 Nikkor lens he is holding and they weight a ton. And there he is hand holding it! Wow! Arms of steel.

Except, of course, it's weightless up there with no gravity so holding a lens of that bulk is about as easy as holding a Kodak Instamatic. Or may a feather!

For all you equipment hounds out there note that it has a 2X extender attached, so he's really holding an 800mm lens. Piece of cake. And, of course, I could have shot that picture if I had been there. I guess the "being there" is the hard part, as usual.

Thanks to Nikon Rumors for bringing this to my attention. See them here: http://nikonrumors.com/

(Please note that the photo is courtesy of NASA. I did not shoot this photo, in case you were wondering what I do with all my time.)

Jim

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One for the Weekend

Nothing like a little domestic bliss during the holiday season.

And nothing like having your marital spat set in stone. I found this couple while high up on the scaffolding on the York Minster in York, England. There, tucked away amongst the gargoyles and angels they sit, a hundred feet in the air, visible only to the passing tourist who happens to have a spotting scope!
Keeping the stone work fresh on a cathedral as huge as the York Minster is a never ending process, and the stone workers toil year in and year out, repairing and replacing what has been eroded by the centuries. When they can copy the original carving they do. When they can't they have some license to create something new in the spirit of the original. I suspect some stoneworker in York had something he wanted to say to his wife, but just couldn't put it in words. So he put it in stone. Stone that will last centuries.
Have a very Merry Christmas.

Jim

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A Gift from the Past

Recently I got a gift from the past.

Out of the blue last week an email arrived from a young photographer I hadn't seen for seven years. (I call all photographers who are younger than me "young." It's a form of affirmative action for geezer photographers.) And with it came a touching story about autism, as well as a lesson about photographers who just do the right thing, for their communities and for themselves.

Kevin Wellenius is the photographer and he was a student of mine at my first Maine Photographic Workshop back in 2002. Kevin is such a nice guy he actually tries to make out that he learned some things from me during that week in Rockport. This was a travel photography workshop and I was pitching the idea of doing earnest research and putting your pictures to work. (Sound familiar?) As I remember Kevin was both affable and hard working and I had no doubt that he would find a way to do something with his photography, which was quite good.

Kevin's email tells some of the story. "I recall often the workshop with you in Maine in 2002. For me it really marked an important point in my growth and commitment to photography. I moved to central Maine with my wife in 2005, and I started working on some small documentary projects on local folks. I'm on temporary hiatus since the birth of our first child in May, but hope to ramp back up in the coming months."

What I found when I followed his link was a really heartfelt story about a man who had spent years of his life running a group home for autistic men. But Kevin went further in the second segment and didn't flinch when the man finally admitted that he withdraw from his world of caregiving. It's not the usual storyline you expect and it's a rough go. Then part three takes the story in yet another unexpected direction. It's worth seeing. Take a look here: http://kevinwellenius.com/foster_mm/act_1/

I was curious about how this story had come into being, where it had been used and where it was leading. "The autism project is the third in an effort a producing small documentary projects in my community," Kevin said. "The first, about a designer that quit his job, sold his house, and moved into a trailer on his uncle's lot to focus on becoming a fine art sculptor, shows some pretty obvious signs of being an early effort. The second, about our local postmaster and the anger and violence issues that ruined his first marriage, was completed last year (and picked up a nice nod of approval in Best of Photojournalism). They have all been self funded and have only seen the light of day on my website, though they have benefited from a close collaboration with Bill Kuykendall, formerly of Univ. of Missouri and the affiliated photo workshop, and now semi-retired and teaching New Media at the University of Maine. For the time being, the projects serve as a vehicle for me to learn to do this kind of work and for neighbors to learn a little bit about one another."

I can't really think of better reasons for doing stories like these. Well, actually, making a little money would be nice, especially with a growing family to think about. But there's reason for hope that the confluence of technology and caring photographers can occasionally lift otherwise unknown moments out of obscurity and present them on center stage.
That's the gift I got with Kevin's email. I'd like to think his kind words about what he learned from me are true. And I'll hope that Kevin finds a bigger forum for his many talents (and good pay, as well.) But in the meantime it was just a pleasure to see what good photographer can do with pictures (and bask in a little bit of reflected glory.)

Jim

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One for the Weekend

Today begins a new feature for Working Photographer.

Plenty of images never see the light of day. Some didn't quite fit the story, or got shoved aside by more precisely relevant images, or failed to make the grade for entirely arbitrary reasons. We all have images like this. Poor orphans locked away in the file cabinets or hard drives, never quite making it to the gallery wall or the double truck spread.

But I still like them. And if being in the stock photography business, or the gallery business teaches you anything it is that pictures have to be seen to have a life. So some of this is about putting picture to work. And some of this is pure pleasure mixed with the hope that someone else might get a little pleasure from the offering.

So here are the guys from the Haythorn ranch in the Sandhills of Nebraska heading back to the chuck wagon after a day of branding. Enjoy!

Jim

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Digital Duffer: It's the Story, Stupid

When the sky is falling it's always wise to look around for an old duffer. They've seen the sky fall before. If the old duffer isn't running around in panic you can relax a little bit.
Here's a great example. Jim Gaines writing in the New York Times about his transition from a substantial, stable career in print to the uncertainties of an all digital web journalism site, FLYP. Now, Gaines is only 61 so I guess I'm in the same Duffer category. But I find his take both thoughtful and valuable.

Most of all he comes down to the simple truth that is always worth remembering: no matter what the medium, it's the story, stupid! And whether that story is told in words or pictures (or both), never forget that if you don't have a story, you got nuthin'. If young women in Japan can write novels via text messages from their cell phones, then the truth is still the same as it ever was: stories matter more than the technology.

So take a look. It's a good read. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/29/jobs/29pre.html

Jim

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Searching for Niches, Big and Small

Photo Business News has an interesting analysis of the bidding going on for PDN and why their business model (some free online content to entice paid online subscriptions) might be big in our futures.

But one line in particular really hit home. It was this:  "As noted at the beginning, broad coverage, in an attempt to serve the masses, is not the future, niche media is."

Writer John Harrington then goes on to show how some small publications (like some local newspapers) are thriving where big publications are struggling. Taken as a whole it is an interesting look at the emerging business model with some good lessons on where to look for future markets for photography.

See the whole piece here: http://photobusinessforum.blogspot.com/2009/12/illyria-with-others-bidding-for-pdns.html

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